The beard is back. Scruffy, thick and scraggly, which is usually a good thing as far as Baron Davis is concerned.

“I’m in work-mode right now, so that’s why I look so scruffy,” he said Friday during a break on the final day of his Rising Stars camp at Crossroads High in Santa Monica.

“All work. Just all work. There’s no reason to get a haircut when I’m not going anywhere but the gym.”

His homecoming season in Los Angeles last year went about as poorly as it could.

He was hurt, frustrated, the Clippers had one of the worst records in the league and, worst of all, he never could see a way to turn the season around.

“It was like a bad dream,” he said, shaking his head at the memories he’s been trying to forget about. “I don’t know who that was last year. It was like a bad dream that you wake up from and you can’t really remember, but you’re like, ‘Damn, I hope that never happens to me again.’

“Once the season was over, that was the last I was going to think of it. I mean, I can’t even tell you where or how, or at what point (it all went wrong), it was just like a bad dream.”

Jokingly, or at least semi-jokingly, Davis said he can’t even remember what happened during the season.

“Memory wiped,” he said. “Sometimes you got to just take the loss and move on.”

Which all sounds like a good plan and means nothing unless Davis executes it.

Hence the beard.

To redeem himself, to wipe all those memories away from last season’s lost season, to make right what went so wrong last year, Davis must work, not talk.

It’s not about inspirational speeches or flashing his famously bright smile. It’s about work, working out, coming into training camp in top shape and being prepared to lead by example.

“My frustration, people could see it. I was frustrated with injuries, frustrated with losing, frustrated with not being able to go out every night and be able to dominate a game or have an impact on the game. It was tough. It was a tough thing to deal with.”

Acknowledging the problem merely is the first step. Confronting and dealing with it are much harder, a fact Davis seems to be acknowledging.

He came home to the city he grew up in expecting to make an impact.

It was more like a failure to launch.

Injuries, a fragile team chemistry and some growing pains in his relationship with Clippers coach and general manager Mike Dunleavy left him feeling lost.

By midseason, the team considered trading him and wondered whether it had bet on the wrong hometown hero.

For Davis, an All-Star point guard – but above all a proud man – it was one of the low moments in his career.

It’s one thing to fail. It’s quite another to fail in your hometown.

But instead of lashing out publicly, he embarked on an off-season training regimen unlike anything he’s ever done.

He started early in the summer and barely took time off when the season came to an end. He worked out in the middle of the night even as he traveled around India with the NBA and to China to promote his shoe and apparel line with the Chinese company Li Ning.

He met regularly with Dunleavy in hopes of rebuilding their relationship.

“We watched a lot of tape. You know, just kind of getting in his brain. Things that he went through as a player, players that he played with,” Davis explained. “Just getting a better construction of who he is. I don’t think that we gave ourselves an opportunity last year to really know each other. We were trying to make it up on the fly, which is tough.

“Neither one of us really got to know each other. But I think all that is behind us now. And it feels good. It feels good.”

Whatever he’s done seems to be going over well with the Clippers. The team is back to calling him its franchise player and no longer is shopping him around the league.

It seems committed to building a team that better suits Davis’ uptempo style.

As one insider put it, “The roster has been designed to capitalize on his abilities. Now it’s on him to deliver.”

Which brings us, as always, back to the beard.

Friday was a perfect summer day in Santa Monica, a soft sea breeze blowing in from the ocean. The gym at his alma mater, Crossroads High, was pleasant and cool.

The beard seemed out of place.

But sometimes the beard does all the talking.

“All I can do is work,” Davis said. “Just work. I have to go back to being ‘Boom,’ back to being me.”

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